Wednesday

There comes a time in everybody's life where he must fire his first maid. Actually, Sunshine was required to fire the maid. She is the one who knows how to say "as I am sure you can tell by looking all around you, we will be moving out soon. Not only are the floors you mop located under piles of things you would normally put away," and etc., in Spanish. Rosy did not seem at all surprised. When it comes to the domestic help, at least here in México where there are laws that govern this type of thing, the real outlay of cash comes at the end of tenure. It's all very well and good to brag about having a housekeeper for the paltry sum of twenty-eight bucks a day, but eventually there’s the three months' worth of severance pay required at termination, one month of pay for the traditional Christmas gift, and another customary cash bonus (multiplied times the number of complete years of service). So, any feelings of sadness at the completion of Rosy's day today were handsomely mitigated by the enormous wad of cash we immediately handed her upon receipt of our keys. The news yesterday reported that somewhere between three (official tally) and fourteen (human rights activism estimates) people were killed in an armed conflict between marginalized Indian peoples in Chiapas the day before. Apparently, the Lacandon Indians don't take too kindly to outsider settlers on their land. For their own part, the squatters had been encouraged to relocate into Lacandon land by the Zapatista-backed peasant farmer group Maderas del Pueblo, who, looking only at the big picture, had positioned these subsistence farmers into local rainforests as a conservation technique.* I suspect this might have worked, but for those old bitter rivalries. [Cavin]